@Ike_Witt, no words of eloquence here. That’s just stunningly bad luck. I wish your sister the strength she will need.
You know how the CSR’s always ask you ‘is it plugged in?’?
I called Google Fiber support (back when Google TV was a thing) because one of our network devices wasn’t working. Google phone support is very good, and he listened as I immediately explained everything I’d done to troubleshoot before calling (mostly rebooting things).
He was puzzled, agreed it was broken (he could ping everything else), we’re bouncing ideas, but nothing. It is important to note that
a) the device was in an semi-hidden location
b) the outlet was old and loose
c) the indicator light wasn’t very bright and it was very light in the room
Yeah, I finally looked close enough to notice the light wasn’t on, and the plug was only halfway into the outlet (I blame either the dog or the cat). Amazing how much better electronics work with power. I bet that guy never failed to have even apparently tech-savvy customers ‘do me a favor and make sure you’ve got power’ again.
I acknowledge this, but it’s also true that while all call centers have some sorts of guidelines and procedures for their CSRs, they widely differ in the resulting quality of support. In my limited experience, for example, Amazon and my cell phone service provider are both very good, the latter perhaps in part because it’s a very competitive industry. Whereas my cable provider has, without a doubt and by a wide margin, the worst customer service of any organization I have ever dealt with, and that experience goes back decades. They have always been either almost useless or completely useless. Competent call centers actually train their CSRs and provide them with useful information and diagnostic tools.
The problem I was experiencing with their email servers – which they claimed were operating perfectly – were indeed real problems which were fixed within about four or five hours by technicians who actually knew what they were doing. The CSRs weren’t even aware there was a problem. Someone from customer service was supposed to call me back within 24 hours to follow up on the problem, and naturally, no one ever did.
But I got at least some emotional satisfaction even if it’s not going to do any actual good. They had the gall to send me a “customer satisfaction” survey to ask about my recent experience. I absolutely excoriated everything about it, and described them as the worst company I’d ever had to deal with. Feeling just a little bad about dumping on this particular CSR, I described the problem as serious lack of training, lack of access to information about system status, and lack of adequate diagnostic tools. If the CSR still gets some flak, I can’t help it – I’m not going to sing her praises after this horrible experience. My basic message was that she was friendly and trying to help but ultimately completely useless.
I once had a phone problem which immediately sent a customer satisfaction survey, which had a link that automatically expired after 48 hours. The problem was resolved 6 days after the link had expired.
I’ve told the story before about when I worked tech support for a medical software company and a new hire went to lunch his first day and never returned. I won’t go into detail because I’ve said it all before, but I’ll repeat that it was mainly because he’d assumed all he needed to do was read a script (which was not the case, you need to actually learn the software and troubleshoot for real). My point is that such a thing is common enough that I’m sure that’s what that guy did at his other jobs.
Thank God I’ve never worked at such a place. If I was forced to follow a script and never deviate I’d never be able to stop myself from going off script and my ass would get fired. I wouldn’t be able to help myself.
On certain things we’re allowed to deviate. In a proud moment, I kept a homeless man whit schizophrenia from having a panic attack. I said, in more polite Dilbert speak, ‘You have nothing. It is very believable that you have nothing. If you say that you who cannot afford a roof over his head or the medication he so desperately needs, have a bank account but cannot find the statement proving it is empty- I think the government will believe you.’ I was able to calm him down and help him finnish applying.
I just want to say that’s really awesome of you to do that.
I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic or not.
I’m not. My brother has schizophrenia and so do some of my other relatives and they aren’t always treated like human beings.
I wish that what you did wasn’t so rare and exceptional but it was, and that makes you exceptional to me as well.
I’ve had schizophrenic students, and one of them had a good sense of humor about it. I’d be writing on the board and my elbow would hit something… because he was an inch from my back.
He’d whisper “I need to talk with you.”
“Do you have a problem?”
“No, I just reeeeally need to chat.”
“Annnd… what’s your plan for these times?”
“Ummm, oh, yeah, RUN AROUND THE BLOCK!”
Worked every time. He’d return winded but relaxed, and able to concentrate.
I have an email account with att.net, which I access via Thunderbird. A few days ago Thunderbird suddenly became unable to access the att.net server; every time it tries I get a message saying that inbound.att.net does not respond, citing a server error. I can access my emails via Yahoo on my browser, but I don’t like to do this because it screws up my system for keeping track of my emails.
ATT customer service has been worse than useless. The chat is a virtual assistant that does not respond to my explanation of the problem and is apparently unable to connect me to an actual person. I tried called their technical assistant number, and the person I was (finally!) able to speak to knew nothing about how Thunderbird accesses their servers, and could only send me links to information that I had already found on their website.
I haven’t used Thunderbird in years but I’m sure it still works the same as it always did, and accesses mail through the standard POP3/IMAP/SMTP methods that mail servers have been using for decades. So there shouldn’t be any real mystery about how to make it work from ATT’s side of things.
The website has instructions listing the POP3 codes and settings that should be used with Thunderbird, and I did verify that the settings on my Thunderbird still match. At one point I was asked for my AT&T password, which is the same one I use to connect via Yahoo, but that didn’t help.
As I expected, and I suspect the problem is on ATT’s end which I’m sure you also suspect, and I totally understand your frustration.
I’ve had a bad back for years (spondylosis, radiculopathy, arthritis, stenosis, etc.) and had surgery in 2017 which helped a lot. Well, now my neck has decided to follow suit and for the second time in two months I can’t move my head more than an inch or two without severe searing pain around my entire neck. I’m afraid I’m looking at future neck surgery, which really scares me. Ugh.
I’ll probably start a thread in the near future…
So sorry, @needsmorethancoffee …
but happily surprised that your back surgery had such a good outcome. Let’s hope that surgery (or a less radical solution) works for your neck!
(I’m meeting with an “Ortho Doc” next week to discuss “everything short of surgery” for my knees and hips.)
That was why I called Technical Non-Support, to see if they would admit that there was a problem with their server (which is what the error message I get seems to be saying) and tell me that they were working on it and maybe even give me a time frame on when it might be fixed. I seem to remember having this problem a few years ago, and their supposed solution was to uninstall and reinstall Thunderbird. This caused me to lose my entire email history. Supposedly there was a way to save my emails before uninstalling, but I found out too late that it didn’t work.
You definitely must have been using POP3 back then too, since it downloads from the server (and doesn’t leave a copy on it), you absolutely would lose it then. That sucks!
And I’m sure that you don’t have a choice, that’s all they offer.
Our porch and roof project are finally finished!!!
Went out with a bang, though. The contractor messaged my gf that Tyler would be out the other day to do the “finishing touches”. So, Tyler cleaned up the scrap and placed two plant hooks at each end of the porch.
Tyler left and my gf hung and watered some hanging baskets, one of which immediately fell! Tyler had screwed the hook through the decorative plastic but there was no wood behind it.
Contractor showed up 15 minutes after the plant fell. He was embarrassed. He then had to redo the hooks, placing them where they should have been placed originally. He then had to replace the two pieces of decorative (soffit?) which had holes. He also had to clean up the mess from the plant falling.
GF wrote his final check but wasn’t smiling.
I may have missed some of the context here, but as I’m sure you know, Thunderbird, Outlook, and I’m sure most other email clients give you a choice about whether or not to leave email on the server, or how long to leave it after downloading via POP3.